Rainbow cake and more!

Ok, I'm finally making time to sit down and write out how I made that crazy rainbow cake that I made for my husband's birthday. I'll also add the recipe for the pulled pork I made as well. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of that. Really, it wasn't all that pretty anyways. Tasted good, but was nothing for looks when compared to the cake. And for kicks, I'll also add the recipe for the chai snickerdoodles I made to use up some of the millions of egg yolks I had left over.


So! Without further ado, how I made the rainbow cake!


First of all, I must give credit to Whisk Kid since it was her blog post that inspired me to make this cake. 


White cake:


• 1 c. butter (room temperature)
• 2⅓ c. sugar
• 5 egg whites (room temperature)
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 3 c. flour
• 4 tsp. baking powder
• ½ tsp. salt
• 1½ c. milk (room temperature)
• food colouring


Preheat the oven to 350°F.


Grease however many 9" pans that you have and set them aside. Remember, this cake has 6 layers of cake, so the more you can bake at one time, the better off you'll be. I only had 2, so it took 3 trips to the oven.


Sift all your dry ingredients together and set them aside. Cream together sugar and butter. Add the egg white and vanilla. Now, alternate adding the dry ingredients and milk, mixing well after each addition. 


Now this part is a bit tricky. You'll have to separate the batter evenly, 6 times. The lady that I got the recipe from sperated them by weight. Weighing the whole bowl and then dividing that number, making each little bowl weigh that much. However, I don't have a kitchen scale. I have a large spoon that is measure to ½ a cup. I used that to split the batter, eyeballing the last little bit that didn't fill the spoon. 


Put your desired colours in each bowl. Again, that lady who did the original recipe used coloured gel, but I got the colours just as vibrant just using regular liquid food colouring. For a traditional rainbow, the colours would be purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red. But there are no rules and you can make whatever colours you want. 


Once the batters are all coloured the colour you want them to be, pour each individual colour into one of the pre-greased baking tins and bake for 15 minutes each. 


Once they're done, set them aside and let them cool. I made each part of the cake one day and then assembled it the next day. If you can't wait a whole day, just make sure they are cooled off completely before you put on the filling and frosting, or you will have a disaster on your hands. 


Now for the frosting.


Swiss buttercream:


• 10 egg whites
• 2 c. sugar
• 2 c. butter (room temperature)
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract


 I could absolutely not do it justice how Whisk Kid explained everything. I'll give you my amounts, but you should defiantly follow her directions here.


White chocolate mousse:


• 8 ounces (1 bag) white chocolate chips
• 1 ⅔ c. heavy cream (chilled)


Stir white chocolate and ⅔ cup cream in heavy medium saucepan over low heat until chocolate is melted. Transfer chocolate mixture to large bowl. Let stand until mixture is cool and just beginning to thicken, stirring occasionally, about 30 minutes. Beat remaining 1 cup cream in medium bowl until stiff peaks form. Fold into cool chocolate mixture in 2 additions. Cover. Chill mousse at least 2 hours. 


Now to layer the cake. 


The order of which the colours *should* go are: purple, blue, green, yellow, orange and then red. But again, you don't have to do it that way if you don't want to. But if you want to stay true the the colour order of an actual rainbow, that's the way you should do it.

Put down a layer of cake. Spread a dollop of white chocolate mouse in the middle. Take a small spoon (or you could use a piping bag) and put some of the butter cream frosting around the mousse. This will help when icing the cake that you won't end up with mousse on the outside of the cake. Repeat this process for each layer. 

To frost the outside of the cake... well... I feel I didn't do a good enough job with my cake, but I'll tell you my technique anyways. I used a rubber spatula to ice around the edge of the cake, starting with a spatula full of icing and then pulling it up and turning the cake while doing this. The top of the cake I just started off with the back of a large knife, turning the cake and slowly smoothing out the icing on top. I then used that knife to smooth out the sides. 

Then viola! You're done! Make sure you refrigerate it if you're not going to eat it right away. It will get get hard in the fridge, so just take it out 15-20 minutes before you will serve it and the butter cream will soften again.

At this very moment, I seem to be having computer issues. I will post the cookie recipe and BBQ pulled pork recipe a little later. 


Caio for now!